Giving people better opportunities to participate in the labour market is a key policy objective in all OECD and EU countries. Efforts to create more and better jobs increase disposable income, strengthen economic growth, address labour shortages and improve well-being. Well-tailored labour market and social protection policies are a key factor in promoting the creation of high-quality jobs and increasing activity rates. Such policies need to address pressing structural challenges, such as rapid population ageing and evolving skill needs, driven by digitalisation and the green transition. They should also foster social inclusion and mobilise all of society.
A major challenge that policy makers face is to make the most effective and efficient use of limited public funds. Knowing what policy measures work best requires the collection of the necessary data, careful planning of impact evaluations and use of their results to guide policy making. The impressive improvements in data collection, processing and storage capacity mean that countries now have a greater ability than ever before to conduct evaluations of their policies using high-quality administrative and survey data. Expertise is needed to conduct robust and credible policy evaluation but also effective communication of their results to inform policy makers.
The OECD is carrying out a set of reviews of labour market and social protection policies to encourage greater labour market participation and promote better employment opportunities, with a special focus on the most disadvantaged who face the greatest barriers to finding quality jobs. This includes a series of country studies, Connecting People with Jobs, which provide an assessment of how well active labour market policies (ALMPs) and public employment services help all groups to move into productive and rewarding jobs, and policy recommendations for improving their effectiveness.
This report uses administrative data from different registers in Portugal to evaluate the impact of the ATIVAR.PT internship programme, introduced in response to the COVID‑19 pandemic to facilitate the integration of young people into the labour market and support the professional retraining of the unemployed through practical work experience. The analysis examines a range of outcomes related to labour market integration and assesses how the internship programme affects different population groups. It finds a positive impact on employment and earnings within the short-term horizon of this evaluation. This report on Portugal is the sixteenth in a series of country reports on policies to connect people with better jobs. It has been undertaken within the framework of the OECD’s project with the European Commission to help countries improve the quality of administrative data and their use in the evaluation of the outcomes and effectiveness of labour market programmes.